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Rising sun vs Green hell – Honda reign at the ‘ring

These days performance cars are very rarely mentioned without some digits in the same sentence. You’d think BHP or torque figures, even 0-60 times. Well, you’d think wrong, more often than not, manufacturers seem to measure their stock against a single lap of the Nurburgring.

We’ve seen the controversy over hyper cars such as the P1, LaFerrari and 918, well, this doesn’t stop there, it extends to the hot hatch market. For a long time, Renault have been at the top of this list, setting record after record, until some manufacturers got a bit silly, taking out seats and using special tyres…Very sneaky.

Well, today Honda have released scorching lap time for their latest Civic Type-R, along with the video, which is rare to have them both at the same time! See if you can guess what it was….

Pretty impressive, right? To put it into perspective, an R8 V10 did it in 7:44.00 and the Golf GTI Clubsport did it in 7:47.19…Yeah.

Full disclosure, according to their article, they say that the navigation system and rear seats, however, the weight was brought back up by a floating roll cage, which they say added no rigidity to the car. They also say that this time was set on road tyres, not race tyres.

So how did they achieve this feat? Honda’s chassis engineer had this to say:

“The cornering speed achieved in the new Type R is higher because the car features a wider track and tyres, a longer wheelbase, new multi-link suspension in the rear and optimised aerodynamics that improve stability,”

Seems like a simple formula, less weight on more road…

For example, drivers typically enter the corner after Metzgesfeld at around 150 km/h. Even at this medium-speed corner, the Type R’s speed is around 10 km/h higher due to its excellent stability. So, with improved cornering performance, we can increase the speed throughout the lap, helping the new Type R to achieve a much quicker lap time.”

Here’s the onboard video.

Very impressive from the Japanese brand, good to see some competition in the market. The question is, what will the others come back with? It’s been a while since the Megane has made a big change to its formula, they’re still on relatively low power figures, and rely on chassis and suspension.